I have PE Design 7 and have used your tutorials in the past and have just purchased the latest version. I have been looking at the info on Embird and am wondering if I would find it useful to have both programs.

The following information has been supplied by Carolyn Keber who writes Tutorials for both the programs.

PE Design is a software program created by the Brother/Babylock company. This program enables you to create your own designs which can then be used in your embroidery machine. There are two main design creation parts to the program - Design Center and Layout and Editing. Design center is a click and fill type of embroidery creation whereas with Layout and Editing you use the tools in the program and create the design yourself from scratch. You choose your own stitch settings, fill directions and much more. Layout and Editing gives you much more control over your design than Design Center. Although you can do a certain level of editing in PE Design it is not as easy as it is in Embird.

Embird contains a whole suite of programs starting from the editing software through to the Digitizing software where you create your own designs. Embird is wonderful for editing and you can do so much more in Embird than you can with PE Design. However if you already own PE Design then I would advise you to learn PE Design so that you can create your own embroidery designs but to buy Embird Basic to do your editing of designs. You will not regret buying Embird as it is wonderful and makes editing so easy.

If you do not own PE Design yet, and are just wondering if you should buy it, then I would say to you not to buy PE Design but to buy Embird instead. It is far better value for your money and the upgrades and updates are either free or approx $15 - which is far less than Brother charge for their upgrades. There is a tremendous amount of support on the internet for Embird - Yahoo groups etc - and you won’t have to rely on your dealer for support.

I have a number of tutorials available for both programs - including some free ones. Feel free to download these tutorials from Secrets of Embroidery and see what you think of the programs. I love Embird - I wouldn’t be without it.